At 97, Clothilde Mack is as sweet as honey

7th October 2013   ·   0 Comments

By Valentine Pierce
Contributing Writer

“How many 97-year-olds do you know that take care of themselves?” Clothilde Mack asked. “I don’t want to be 100. When I can’t take care of myself or Jill, I don’t want to be here.”

Jill is the cat with the “gender identity crisis,” as Ms. Clothilde, who was born in 1916, calls it. He was given to her by the people who took care of her in Tennessee after Hurricane Katrina. They told her he was a girl and she named it after one of the cats she’d lost in the storm. When she found out the cat was a boy she decided to let him keep the name.

Mack, who has been a loyal Louisiana Weekly reader for more than 50 years, was born in Pearlington, Miss. As a girl she dreamed of leaving Pearlington, which back then had only a few people and no racism. “Now there are thousands of people,” she said. One of her favorite things to do was ride the boat. “The boat would go from Pearlington to Slidell,” she said. “Mail would come by boat from Dunbar.” Mack was 15 when they put Highway 90 in. “Then the mail would come by a truck from Bay St. Louis.”

Of The Louisiana Weekly Mack said, “I feel like I know Mr. [Edmund] Lewis personally. I read his column every week. I remember when the Weekly) was on Rampart St.”

Mack, the youngest of 10 children, says she was born during her mother’s “change of life.” When she was a youth there was nothing to distract young people. No “‘lectricity.” To keep cool they had high ceilings and would keep the windows and doors open. “It wasn’t hot like it is now. I wouldn’t have made it.”

She also wouldn’t have made it through Katrina had it not been for relatives putting her name on a missing persons list and then being rescued by the Coast Guard after 11 days in her home. Nor would she have made it had one of the friends she made in Tennessee, who calls every morning and evening, not called on May 8, when she had a stroke.

Mack told her friend to call her cousin, James Martin, 56, who, along with his wife, Gaynelle, is always on hand for whatever she needs. “They take me wherever I want to go,” Mack said of her cousins. “Gaynelle does my grocery shopping now since I had the stroke. I don’t do that walking. I just give her the list. She knows where everything is.” The Martins also shared birthday dinner with Mack in the executive dining room at Harrah’s Casino. Mack admits she was so tired after the bus ride that she was still tired Tuesday when she went to Harrah’s.

Carlota Houlemard also went on the trip. When she boarded the bus, the two greeted each other with kisses and hugs and sat together on the bus like two teenagers with a lot of stories to tell each other.

“ Theresa,” Mack exclaimed, calling Houlemard by her middle name.

“Oh my God, how long have I known you?” Houlemard asked Mack.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s been so long,” Mack replied.

“It’s got to be at least 40 to 45 years.”

“Yeah, oh yeah!” Mack said.

Like most years, Mack celebrated her birthday at the casino. She has no children and her husband, Daniel, died after 12 years of marriage. “He was the one for life,” Mack said.

Another close friend, Shirley Charlot, has known Mack for more than a decade. “She kind of reminds me of my grandmother and I’m 86 but I look upon her as my grandmother,” Charlot said. “Her mind is better than mine. When I want to be reminded, I call Mack. Honey, she is a doll. She is as sweet as sweet can be—but don’t cross her.” Her friends know that warm, effervescent personality can run fiery hot when Mack is riled.

Mack is a living calendar for her friends who, when they have something important to remember, call her. That calendar of events goes back a long ways. Mack remembers when World War II ended. “We went out to dinner and bells began to ring. It was over. They had dropped the atomic bomb.” Mack still has the award she received for her civilian service during war time. “I’m so glad it survived,” she said. So many of her important papers didn’t.

Ramona McConnell, coordinator for the September 21 bus ride, has also known Mack for several years. “Here’s a lady in all her right faculties, 97 years old. Gets out and about,” McConnell said.

“She’s a very caring person, very caring. Always calling up, wanting to know how my husband is doing and how Muffin is doing, the lil dog,” McConnell continued. “We want to be able to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ Stevie Wonder-style. She’s gonna enjoy that.”

Another rider was Monica Barallona. “I was with her on the plane to Tennessee,” Barallona said. “That was the plane taking her from the ravaged city after Hurricane Katrina.

“She took care of me in Ten­nessee and after I got back here,” Mack said. “Every Saturday she’d get on the bus and come down to the trailer and fix my breakfast. She’s a wonderful person.”

“No person on this earth that I’d be in this rain for except for Mack,” said Shirley Grimes, who stooped to put her head on Mack’s shoulder.

Mack knows tomorrow is not promised so she is prepared. She had taken care of her final arrangements and also made arrangements for Jill.

Her friends though, hope Mack is around another 100 years.

This article originally published in the October 7, 2013 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.